


Zeno's Arrow

by jayemgriffin



Category: The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 10:51:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20406514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayemgriffin/pseuds/jayemgriffin
Summary: Jess's backstory, in her own words.





	1. The College Years

You think a lot of stupid things when you’re young. Or, I guess, you  _ don’t _ think, and that’s what gets you into trouble. If I’d had a plan, I would’ve turned out different. Not… well.

When I graduated high school, I only wanted two things for my future. I didn’t want to stay in Chicago forever, and I didn’t want to be a cop. I didn’t have a fucking clue about what I  _ did  _ want to do. Stupid, right?

That was the worst fight I ever had with my dad. His family’s always been cops. There’ve been Majeskis on the Chicago police force since there was a Chicago and a police force. I’m the last one with the name - Uncle Karl died young, and Uncle Eddie never had any kids - so when I told him I was going to college and not the academy, that pissed him off real bad. My mom used to say that’s what ended up killing him, that he never drank so bad before I told him I didn’t want to join the force. But she only ever said it when she was pissed at me, so who knows. 

I don’t regret that at all. I’ve seen what that life does to people. That’s what happened to Uncle Karl. Twenty-seven years old, promising young lieutenant, took eight rounds on a drug bust. Uncle Eddie’s heart couldn’t handle the stress. And my dad… he was a good cop. A really good cop. One of the best. But then he got injured in the line of duty and couldn’t do it anymore. That tore him up. Can you imagine, having something you were born to do, something that you love and take pride in, and then it’s ripped away from you? Turns out he couldn’t handle it either. Just took him longer to die, is all.

Anyway. I knew I didn’t want to be a cop. I won that fight with my dad, but it didn’t feel like much of a victory. We both said a lot of shit we shouldn’t have. He didn’t kick me out or anything like that, but it wasn’t the same between us. I got accepted into the City Colleges - bachelor’s in Communications, class of ‘05. I didn’t know shit about Communications, but it sounded like something that could get me some kinda job someday. Like I said, I was a stupid kid.

College was alright. I wasn’t that bright, but I did okay. Dated some guys, some girls, whatever. Living someplace other than my parents’ house was nice. And I met Kate, of course. I thought a little more about what I wanted to do with my future, not that I came up with any great ideas. I had this stupid plan that I’d do a road trip after I graduated, visit every state in the US, maybe Canada or something, and then… take pictures? Write about it? Find myself? I don’t fucking know. Like driving around would solve anything. But I started saving money for it. Bussed a lot of tables and scrubbed a lot of dishes.

Then my dad died. January 23rd, 2005. My mom came home after work and found him dead in the kitchen. He’d finally drunk himself to death. She kind of went off the rails a little bit after that, and, well, I did too. Did a bunch of stupid things to make myself stop thinking about it. Poker and the ponies, mostly. It was exciting, but it wasn’t  _ real _ , you know? Of course, it actually was. Next thing I knew, the money I’d saved up for that trip was gone and I was in hock to the King.

Kate got engaged sometime in there, too. Sometimes I wonder…

I did manage to graduate, God only knows how, but it’s not like I had the cash to go anywhere anymore. I started sending out applications to wherever. Then one of my dad’s old buddies from the force approached me. Said they could find me a job with the city somewhere. I was already fucked, I wasn’t gonna pass up job security and a pension. That’s how I ended up with COSA.

Somewhere in there - don’t quite know where, don’t want to know - Marcone bought all my debt from Lear. I’ve been trying to pay it back for twelve years now, but fuck, I’m a city employee. We haven’t had a  _ budget _ since 2015. I’m barely making the minimum payments. So as long as I want to keep living in a house and eating food, Marcone owns my ass. If I lose this job, I don’t know what the fuck happens then. My mom’s in a nursing home; they sold the house ages ago. She doesn’t even know my name anymore. My half-brother lives in fucking Indiana and doesn’t like me anyways.

So what, you want advice? Don’t end up like me. Plan, for christ’s sake. You gotta know what you want to do and not just what you don’t want to do. And make sure it’s an actual plan, not just some vague floaty idea of what would be nice. Just… don’t be an idiot, okay?


	2. Kate

So you want to know about Kate, huh? Well. I’m not great at talking about this stuff, but I’ll try.

I told you, I dated and slept around a lot in college. Some guys, mostly girls. Lot of girls. I was a bit of a butch - short hair, flannel shirts, all that. I liked the girls I slept with, but you know, it was nothing serious. We were all just young and having fun, and that’s how I liked it.

I met Kate at some frat party or other. I guess her friends had dragged her along and then ditched her, so she was nursing this one warm beer and not talking to anyone. I’m not a total dick, so I went over to talk to her. Yeah, alright, her being gorgeous sure didn’t hurt. 

I don’t even remember what the fuck I said, but I wish I could, cause it worked. We started hanging out, just as friends. We just clicked. I don’t know how to explain it. We got to be really good friends, and then, I mean, stuff happened. We trusted each other. It just sort of evolved into… I dunno, something. Something good.

We never made a thing about it, though. Her family’s real Catholic, strict religious folks, so she wasn’t going to say anything, and I don’t think my parents gave a shit about what I was getting up to. We just kinda kept doing what we were doing, and never said anything about it. I fucked guys occasionally, and she started dating someone from her art history class. We still had this thing, though, and neither of us wanted it to change. So we didn’t talk about it. Like if you looked at it too closely, it’d end up gone.

Well, then my dad died, and I sort of… well, you know. Anyway. I guess sometime in there, she and that guy from her art history class got engaged. She told me they were going to move out to Arizona, where his family was. What was I gonna say? No? So we graduated, she left, I stayed.

She emailed me a couple months later. She was coming back to Chicago to see some friends, did I want to get together? Of course I did. We ended up spending the weekend together. Another few months after that, she was flying through to visit her family in Columbus. Then she wanted to see something up at the Art Institute. We kept seeing each other. I knew she was married by then, and I probably shouldn’t, but goddamnit, those were the best three years of my life. I wasn’t just going to turn her down.

It got harder after she had her first kid, but we found time. Then I got promoted, and she had another kid, but we still find time. Weekends, here and there. Layovers. I’ll just get an email, and I clear my schedule. We don’t talk in between then. I know she wants to, and I do too, but she loves her family, and they shouldn’t know about this.


	3. The Chicago Office of Supernatural Affairs

When I first got the job with COSA, I didn’t know what the fuck it did. I mean, I could guess. I already kinda knew about werewolves and vampires and shit. Gramma Eski - my dad’s mom - she’d been one of the first female Black Cats, and I’d heard all her old war stories. Never really paid that much attention, though. Would’ve made things a lot easier if I had.

I told you, I needed a job real bad after I graduated, so one of Dad’s old coworkers set up an interview for me with someone in - Christ, I don’t remember, maybe tourism? It went fine, I guess. I don’t remember. Anyway, I never heard back from whoever I interviewed with, but I did hear back from COSA. Just an email congratulating me on my new position, effective tomorrow, as COSA Service Representative, signed by Mr. Ball.

So I show up the next day, not a fucking clue in the world as to what’s going on, and I somehow find my way to this office. It looked even worse than it does now, if you can believe it. Paper everywhere, this ancient old PC half-buried in files, no rhyme or reason at all. I’d just started to dig the computer out and read a couple of the files when the phone rang.

It was Randy Khan, from over in Water Management. Told me he’d found a baby sea serpent in someone’s sump pump. See, when it starts getting cold, most of them swim down to deeper waters and settle in for the winter, but some of the little ones get confused and end up in the storm drains. It must’ve swam upstream until it found a nice warm hole to curl up in. Like I knew that back then. Anyway, he asked me to come out and take care of it, and like a dumbass, I just agreed.

So I drove out there and walked into this woman’s basement, and Randy said hi and handed me a pair of work gloves. I put them on, leaned over the sump pump, and sure enough, I saw this translucent snake thing curled up in the basin. It was only about a yard long - must’ve just hatched. It kinda looked like a lizard, and some of my friends had had lizards when I was a kid, so I figured I knew what I was doing. I reached down and grabbed it right behind the head so it couldn’t bite me.

Now, sea serpent bites aren’t  _ fun _ , but that’s not what you gotta watch out for. If I’d managed to put two and two together - how do they sink ships, bite them to death? No. That’s right, it’s the tail. 

So I’m holding this thing by the back of the head, and it’s cold and freaked out, and all of a sudden, I hear my ribs crack and all the wind gets knocked out of me. Because of course the little fucker is trying to get away. It was only by the grace of God that I actually managed to wrestle the damn thing into a trash bag. Randy was laughing so hard I think he pulled something. He’s never gonna let me live that down.

I threw the fucking trash bag into the back of my car and drove it down to the lake and let it out. I figured, seas are like very big lakes, right, so that’s probably the best spot for it, and more importantly, I don’t want to keep it in my trunk. So I get my broken-rib soaking-wet ass back to the office and start looking around for information on  _ what the fuck just happened _ .

And that’s when I found this. The keys to the kingdom. The codes. Basically a decoder ring to the decades of files stuffed into the fucking closet they call an office. So I look up sea serpent - NVN-80032 - and read  _ everything _ connected to it. Years worth of incident reports, notes, information - it was a goddamn goldmine.

So that pretty much set the pattern for every single call I got from then on. Somebody calls in, says they’ve had a run-in with, I don’t fucking know, a werelizard, I pull all the files and read them as fast as I can, and then use that to figure out what the fuck to do. After a while, I didn’t have to consult the files every time, but I wouldn’t have gotten to that point without them. I am not exaggerating when I say that a consistent, well-organized filing system saved my damn life on multiple occasions. I started digitizing them whenever I had a spare minute. I’ve gotten back to ‘71 so far. I’m not sure how far back they actually go.

Two years in, I got promoted to Senior Service Representative, and then to Assistant Director in ‘10, and Associate Director in ‘12. The work didn’t change at all, but they couldn’t give me a raise without a title bump. Government BS. Dunno where they’ll go from here, or if I’ve topped out.


End file.
